Page 74 of From Unwanted to Duchess
CHAPTER 24
Frances
“… a
nd then he simply walked away,” Frances finished.
A few days later, she found herself at Marianne’s ball.
Charlotte shook her head. “Men. Insufferable creatures. Maddening, the lot of them. One minute they dance with you, one minute they pay you all the attention in the world and act as though you are the best thing that has ever happened to them, the next they leave you standing alone, feeling foolish for having kissed them.”
“And I felt like a fool, indeed,” Frances huffed. “Like some silly miss fresh out of the schoolroom. I should’ve waited. I should’ve waited for him to kiss me.”
“Oh, you may have waited for an eternity. These men do not know what they want,” Evelyn said, shaking her head. “Nathaniel was the same. Back and forth, back and forth. I grew quite vexed. Ready to box his ears, truly.”
“But what did you do in the end?” Frances asked. “For I am at my wits’ end. I do not know what to do or say or how to act. He has me quite at sixes and sevens.”
“How has he acted the last few days?” Marianne asked.
Frances pressed her lips together, trying to put into words her recent interactions with her husband.
“He has been kinder. Less abrupt. Less withdrawn. We dine together, and we converse about the estate, about books, about new laws, but not about what he revealed to me. We maintain decorum, but there is a… distance still.”
“What exactly was it that he revealed to you?” Charlotte asked. “You did not say.”
Frances paused. Indeed, she hadn’t shared what James had revealed to her. She hadn’t wanted to betray his trust in such a way. He had opened up to her and told her the truth of what had happened with his father and brother, but her cousins didn’t know, her aunt didn’t know, and she didn’t think anybody should be told—not by her. If he chose to come forth with the truth, that was up to him, but she could not reveal what she had learned.
“It was something about his childhood,” she said.
She had recounted a very vague version of what had happened, saying that they had quarreled and that he had finally revealed some things about himself she hadn’t known.
“About his childhood?” Evelyn echoed. “About his father being horrible? We already knew that.”
“Yes,” Frances said. “About that and about other things.”
“It is not her place to tell us what he confided in her,” Marianne chastised her sisters. “Your husbands would not want you to share their deepest darkest secrets with us, only to have you gossip like fishwives.”
“I have told you everything that Nathaniel has ever said to me,” Evelyn said. “And I have no doubt he shares what I tell him with his friends.”
“I haven’t,” Charlotte piped up.
“Neither have I,” Marianne said.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “You haven’t told Judith? She’s your dearest friend. Your most particular friend, your bosom companion. I can understand you not telling us things that Lucien confides in you, but not telling Judith?”
Marianne looked down at her shoes.
Frances smiled. She had heard about Judith, whom Marianne had met during her time at the convent. She lived elsewhere now, but the two corresponded regularly. Judging by Marianne’s expression, she did confide in Judith about many things she wouldn’t share with her sisters.
“In any case,” Charlotte continued, “whatever it is that he told you, it must’ve been significant, for something changed in you. Ithasmarked you.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Frances said, although that wasn’t quite true.
James’s revelation had softened her even further toward him. She had already felt drawn to him, closer to him for some time, even though he had vexed her, but she had seen a side of him she had never expected. So vulnerable, so broken.
“Do you love him?” Evelyn asked.
Frances looked up. “Love? I do not know. I…”
